Will Sun Still Shine for SPARC and Solaris?

Cases

Surely, you have heard of the massive layoffs by Oracle. A significant number of employees from SPARC and Solaris divisions lost their jobs. Oracle inherited SPARC and Solaris from Sun Microsystems back in 2009. According to reports, the software assets like Java and Solaris were the real prizes for the deal.

Oracle made layoffs stealthily one Friday but who wouldn’t have noticed that big news. However, to many of us in the industry, it did not come as a great surprise as many have predicted it already.

Former Sun executive Bryan Cantrill wrote about these cuts as “so deep as to be fatal: The core Solaris engineering organisation lost on the order of 90% of its people, including essentially all management.”

The question whether this is the start of SPARC and Solaris complete demise or not is looming in the air.

Prior to the cutback was the announcement that Oracle will be hiring 5,000 workers for their cloud business. And what makes things interesting is, the company launched its 8^th generation SPARC platform with its M8 microprocessor, which is said to be the key to running business applications and scale-out environments in Oracle Cloud and on-site.

These unfolding of events is sending a message that eventually Oracle will be focusing on the cloud –no longer on Sun. And that would be reasonable as the cloud and open source databases are considered to be the company’s biggest threat.

According to one of our sources from Burgess Oracle Database Consultants Australia, “Oracle is moving as quickly as they can to get out of anything that is proprietary and not supported by open source.”

EOSL of Sun SPARC T3-1 Server 8 and 16 Core

Oracle’s End of life (EOSL) products now includes SPARC T3-1 Server 8 Core and 16 core. Therefore, the company will no longer be selling, marketing and supporting these products.

As per Oracle’s policy, the company will use commercially reasonable efforts to provide twelve (12) months advance notice of End of Service Life.

For Sun SPARC T3-1 Server 8 and 16 Core along with those listed in the EOL servers, Oracle will cease providing support for the hardware or software product.

SPARC-Solaris and TPM

With all the uncertainties on how the future with SPARC and Solaris look like, planning for migration is not a far-fetched enterprise option despite Oracle’s promise to support the products until 2030’s.

But, what if you have a choice to have your SPARC hardware supported and maintained by a customer-centric, OEM and platform agnostic, and independent vendor? Your organisation can continue to work peacefully without the pressure of migration or increase capital expenditure anytime soon. You’ll remain calm regardless of the SPARC-Solaris issues because you know that you can get the support any time you need it.

Since TPMs are independent IT support service provider, they are not tied to SPARC-Solaris roadmaps and restrictive vendor agreements.

By switching to a third-party maintenance (TPM) vendor like ITSM, your enterprise is guaranteed to have the support you need for your SPARC equipment. At the same time, you can save as much as 50% or more than working with an OEM, thus reducing expenditure and increasing your ROI. Since TPMs are independent IT support service provider, they are not tied up to SPARC-Solaris roadmaps and restrictive vendor agreements. Your organisation can get the support from Sun Certified professionals for your SPARC hardware and your end of life (EOL) servers at the fraction of the OEM cost.

As long as ITSM can avail hardware parts in the global market, we guarantee the support of your SPARC equipment.

Find out how ITSM can support your SPARC gear and reduce your CAPEX. Call +61 2 8355 1080 now or click the image below to schedule a consultation.